Government claim of 80,000 ghost teachers found due to Aadhaar disproved by RTI

“So far only 85% teachers have given their Aadhaar numbers and we have found 80,000 cases in which lecturers were listed as employed with more than one institutes,” the minister said. “In some cases, we found teachers employed as lecturers in as many as 4 institutes,” he added.

Immediately after that, a lecturer, Saurabh Bhattacharjee had posted on Facebook that the All India Survey on Higher Education – AISHE asked for Aadhaar for 2016-2017 survey. Some had Aadhaar but refused to give. Others didn’t have Aadhaar. But the xml file on which the data was to be entered would not be validated without Aadhaar and the entries without Aadhaar were declared “ભૂત“.

Now, researcher and activist Anjali Bharadwaj has posted the responses to two RTIs she had filed seeking information about these ghost lecturers.

.@HRDMinistrysays it has no info on inquiry set up & action taken against those responsible for fraud. Who was paying salaries to 80,000 bogus teachers? Why is ministry not punishing anyone for misapropriating public funds? Claims of savings only for#Aadhaarpropoganda? 2/2pic.twitter.com/Ukv0la7AmK

According to the response provided by the Ministry of HRD in the RTI, they are not able to provide any evidence to back this claim.

Anjali had requested for the following information in the RTI:

While releasing the AISHE 2017-18, HRD Minister Shri Prakash Javdekar had said that 80,000 bogus teachers ahd been detected through use of Aadhaar (link to statement of minister – https://goo.gl/ixfYzz). Kindly provide the following information in this regard-

બનાવટી શિક્ષકો રાજ્યવાર નંબર શોધાયેલ

State-wise details of each bogus teacher detected, including-

આવા શિક્ષકનું નામ

કોલેજો / યુનિવર્સિટીઓ સંખ્યા જ્યાં શિક્ષક નોકરી કરતા હતા

કોલેજો / યુનિવર્સિટીઓ નામ જ્યાં શિક્ષક નોકરી કરતા હતા

To this, the RTI response from Saumya Sakshi, Assistant Director and CPIO was the following:

In this regard, part information available and pertaining to Higher education are as follow:

The ministry has, for the first time, collected details of individual Teachers of institutions of Higher Education, through the recently conducted All India Survey on Higher Education (AISHE) 2016-17, for the Gurujan Portal. Data of Teachers with Aadhaar number has been collected in AISHE 2016-17. As per gurujan (gurujan.gov.in) portal, 85708 Aadhaar numbers are found to be either duplicate or invalid. These cases would be further verified with UIDAI and the institution concerned before finalising the action to be taken in each case.

With regard to information pertaining to point (1) and (2) it is stated that this Division has no information to furnish in this regard.

If you are not satisfied with the aforesaid reply…..

In a second RTI, Anjali had asked the following:

While releasing the AISHE 2017-18, HRD Minister Shri Prakash Javdekar said that 80,000 bogus teachers had been detected through use of Aadhaar (link to statement of minister- https://goo.gl/ixfYzz). Kindly provide the following information in this regard-

Details of any inquiry set up in the matter including copy of order initiating the inquiry and the reports of inquiry, if any

Details of disciplinary action taken against officials who were involved in this fraud.

પાવર

Vidyut is a commentator on socio-political issues with a keen understanding of tech and policy. She has been observing and commenting on Aadhaar since 2010 from a perspective of human rights, democracy and technological robustness.

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